Connecting With Customers Emotionally Online

What do consumers base their purchasing decisions on? Product and price are important factors in decision making, but how we feel about the brand and the company is also vital. As consumers, we all have the go-to websites we like to purchase from, and others we tend to avoid because we dislike them for one reason or another. Our purchasing decisions aren’t always 100% logical, and that’s why it’s important for businesses to connect with customers emotionally.

Emotionally engaged customers are at least three times more likely to recommend a brand, and three times more likely to re-purchase. So instead of thinking like a business, you may make more headway by thinking of your marketing strategy as one human communicating with another. After all, isn't this what's actually happening? You are a human first and a business second, and your customer is a human first and a customer second.

By writing engaging copy for your website that reveals something about you and your company, you can establish a strong connection with your customers. This is the foundation on which you can build through social media, email marketing and user-generated content. Here are a few ideas for how your online presence can help you engage with customers on an emotional level:

Know your customers

Use the copy on your website to show your customers that you understand them, their needs and their values. Letting customers know that you have similar values to them and that you can fulfil their needs will show them that you are a company that they should enter into a relationship with.

You can also show existing customers that you understand their needs through email marketing, recommendations and other content tailored specifically to them and their previous purchases. Of course, this only works if you get it right – suggesting products your customers have no interest in will in fact have the opposite effect and show them that you don’t understand them at all.

Share your experiences and be authentic

Telling the truth and revealing something about yourself and your background will make you seem open and trustworthy. For example, how did the business get started, and why? This also makes you unique, which is important for encouraging customers to develop a relationship with you and not your competitors.

If you can talk about some experiences you have had that customers may also have had, you can show empathy, enabling customers to feel a connection with you.

Make it personal

Show your personality through the tone you write in – be friendly and casual or humorous if this is appropriate for your business, and if it isn’t, you can always be empathetic and understanding, and say something that resonates with the customer.

Reinforce the personal touch with your own images, such as photos of your workplace, products, and staff in action. If you are able to use these, they will feel more authentic than stock images.

Show customers that they need you

You can establish a connection in your product descriptions by not only explaining what the product does but how it fulfils your customers’ emotional needs.

You should also show customers that you are an expert. Become somebody your customers rely on and turn to when they have a problem you can help solve. Use your website and blog (and other people’s websites through guest blogging, commenting and so on) to demonstrate how you can be there for your customers.

Get existing customers involved

According to this pdf from Bazaar Voice, Millennials, who by 2017 will have more spending power than any other generation, trust people more than brands. This means that they want to read reviews from other customers, and they rely on user-generated content to help them make a purchasing decision.

Ask customers what they think of you and your products or services through customer reviews or user-generated content, and treat it like it is important, not an afterthought – if it’s important to your customers, it should be important to you. People want to feel valued, as well as read what other customers think. By displaying reviews on your website you’re showing existing and potential customers that their opinions matter.

You could also display some information about each reviewer, for example, age, location and occupation, so that customers can see that people who are similar to them enjoy using your product or service.

Listen and respond

Use social media to find out how your customers feel about you and your product or services. It’s no good standing on the sidelines watching – you need to show them that you are listening, that you value their contribution and that you’re acting upon the information. Join in with the conversation to establish and strengthen relationships.